NYC Crypto Bros Granted $1M Bail After Alleged Bitcoin Kidnapping and Torture

The two NYC “crypto bros” accused of kidnapping and torturing an Italian millionaire to extract his Bitcoin password had been granted $1 million bail every.

A Manhattan Supreme Court Justice handed down the choice on Wednesday for John Woeltz and William Duplessie, ordering neither can use cryptocurrency to submit bail. If they’ve the funds, the pair can be launched into residence confinement with digital monitoring and passport give up pending trial.

Celebrity bail bondsman Ira Judelson will put collectively the bail packages for each males and match them with ankle screens.

Both males beforehand pleaded not responsible to costs of kidnapping, assault, illegal imprisonment, and criminal possession of a weapon. The suspects allegedly lured Italian entrepreneur Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan to their rented Manhattan townhouse and saved him trapped there for over 17 days, attempting to drive him to cough up his Bitcoin password.

Prosecutors say the suspects drugged the sufferer, pistol-whipped him, and used electrical wires to shock him. The males allegedly carried him to the highest of a staircase and threatened to throw him over a ledge if he didn’t surrender his Bitcoin password. Eventually, Carturan caved — pointing them to a laptop computer the place the password was saved.

At the time, TMZ received unique video of Carturan making a break for it, sprinting after a site visitors cop — simply earlier than Woeltz and Duplessie had been arrested. Carturan was hospitalized and handled for accidents that prosecutors say corroborate his account.

A police search of the SoHo townhouse uncovered cocaine, a noticed, hen wire, physique armor, evening imaginative and prescient goggles, ammunition, and Polaroids exhibiting a gun pointed on the sufferer’s head.